CBO: Income Inequality Not Getting Worse

There has been a lot of class-warfare talk from Barack Obama and his cohorts in the media (and Bane, in The Dark Knight Rises) that either intimates or baldly states that the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the gap between them is ever-widening in America. In addition, talk has been bandied about that the rich pay less taxes than the rest of Americans. But according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), neither of these leftist canards is true.

Between 2007 and 2009, (once the Democrats took over Congress and the recession started) the earnings accrued after taxes by the top 1% of wage earners fell 37%. And even before taxes their earnings fell 36%. Meanwhile, the lowest 20% of earners saw their income grow by 3%, while the middle class dropped a modest 2%. This means that the incomes of the top 1% fell 18 times more than middle class incomes. In 2007, the top 1% earned 16.7 percent of all after-tax income, but by 2009, it had shrunk to 11.5%.

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So while the rich saw their fortunes plummet, the poor gained, and the middle class treaded water. So much for an ever-widening gap. And as far as the amount paid in taxes, the top 1% paid an average of 28.9%, while the middle class paid 11%.

But the New York Times had the gall to say in March, “New statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else — and the desperate need to address this wrenching problem.” One problem; the Times didn’t get their statistics from the CBO.

Now, this kind of inequality — a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression — hurts us all. Inequality also distorts our democracy … And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk … This isn’t about class warfare … And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule of our national life,” he said, “the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

One problem; under Obama and the Democrats, the rich are already losing money by the bushel, so he is, as usual, making a specious argument. And for him to claim that he isn’t fomenting class warfare, a la Bane, is a bald-faced lie.